KEW The Acid Test: The Problem and The Questions (Episode 104)

What is the question!!!????

Say you are studying the effectiveness of a vaccine against some pathogen. What is the question? Too many times we get wrapped up in the specifics. The details. The minutia. We forget WHY we are doing this in the first place. In this case, I would say the question is, does this vaccine help reduce the problems associated with said pathogen?

Maybe you’re interested in climate change. So you gather a bunch of data on historic carbon dioxide concentrations in Earth’s atmosphere. The numbers change in the past 75 years. What does that mean?

Well, what was your question???!?!! Was it, how much do humans suck? Or, how bad is the coal industry? Or were you simply asking whether or not the carbon dioxide concentrations have changed through time?

The question frames the conclusions of our investigations. Whether they are scientific in nature or otherwise. The conclusions need to be based on those questions. Making leaps outside the realm of your question is not allowed. For example, maybe the vaccine sort of works in reducing pathogen numbers, but not enough to reduce the number of people getting sick. Can you say it doesn’t work, or simply that it might not work for a particular application? Or maybe CO2 concentrations have increased a little, but can you say anything about whether or not this is a good or bad thing? NO.

That’s part of why science sucks. It’s slow.

Good thing we have other ways of knowing. Observation. Intuition. Even religious investigations can produce meaningful knowledge. Science isn’t the only way to ask or answer questions. But it is one of the best.

A major point of the Great KEW Acid Tests is to employ a different way of thinking and asking questions. I’ll call it a noveau-scientific method. It’s equal parts creativity, inspiration, and science-like process. I’ll follow rules similar to science to reduce bias, but allow myself to draw upon the knowledge I’ve been inspired by, and assisted by a level of creativity that a jazz musician would bring.

In fact, jazz is a great analogy here. I have put in the hard work to learn the ‘music’, or the science and knowledge in this case, but I am allowing myself to play outside the notes. I’m allowing myself to be inspired by what I’ve learned from others, and to use the basic structure of the chords and octaves, but to also nurture my unique creativity to bring a fresh perspective.

Because if there’s one thing lacking from our traditional ways of thinking it is fresh perspectives.

So, first difference: inspired and creative thinking

The first thing I’ll do, which is also much different from traditional ways of thinking, is to throw everything I know onto the ‘board’.

Most people begin a project simply spring boarding off of a previous study or another person’s ideas. I’m not going to punch down on this approach, it is incredibly viable. But it means the needle moves in tiny increments. And it is also necessitated by the constraints of traditional thinking which include funding, employment, and corporate rules and restrictions.

Because I am a free-agent with zero ties (except to my family), I can safely ignore these constraints and do whatever the hell I damned-well please. So the first thing I will do is throw complexity to the wind and populate my questions with every single variable I can imagine.

So, the second difference is, there are no rules

In this case, the problems are obvious to me:

War

Famine

Social Justice Issues

Anxiety

Depression

Suicide

Income inequality

General dissatisfaction with ‘the way things are’

And the question is, can nature provide insight into how we might improve these problems?

I’ll talk more specifically about these questions and problems in a future episode.

See y’all next week, I hope you enjoy these episodes:

Podcast audio: https://pdcn.co/e/https://chtbl.com/track/CGDA9D/www.buzzsprout.com/530563/11912371-kew-episode-104-the-acid-tests-the-problem-and-the-questions.mp3?download=true

YouTube video: https://youtu.be/FvGOhg8GenY